A search for home: displaced life in Ukraine.

The first question that arises regarding IDPs in Ukraine is their number. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy's website, there were 4.6 million people at the end of October this year. This is the total number of those who are formally registered as IDPs.

However, this figure is inaccurate. On the one hand, it does not include those who have fled but have not registered, for example, because they would not be entitled to any state support. On the other hand, it is significantly overestimated. Experts from the Kyiv School of Economics recently estimated that approximately 950,000 registered persons have either returned home or moved abroad.

More reliable data on the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) is provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which uses telephone or online surveys of thousands of people for its reports and uses the term "de facto IDPs" for displaced persons. In its latest report, published in October 2025, the IOM estimates the number of de facto displaced persons at 3.7 million.

Most displaced persons live near the front line

One of the key findings of the IOM studies is that most IDPs are currently not located in the relatively safer west of the country, but in the eastern regions, which directly border territories occupied by Russia or are themselves partially occupied. About 1 million IDPs live in the unoccupied parts of the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions. Most of them moved within the same region or from a neighbouring one. The largest number of people fled from the Donetsk region, which is currently about three-quarters occupied.

In contrast, in the west of the country—specifically in the eight westernmost regions—there are "only" around 600,000 displaced persons. By comparison, in the weeks following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, 2.5 million people moved west. By the spring of 2022, shortly after Russian forces withdrew from Kyiv and the focus of the fighting shifted to Donbas, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons had returned home—or at least to their home regions.

There are several reasons why IDPs so often remain as close to home as possible despite the security risks. First and foremost, they believe in returning: IOM surveys show that in the medium term (3 months or more), only about a third of displaced persons plan to return. But only a third intend to stay in their current place of residence and integrate. In general, uncertainty prevails among IDPs when it comes to plans for the future.

Many people want to stay close to home for emotional but also purely practical reasons, for example, to remain within reach of relatives who have not moved or who have refused to evacuate. Russian-speaking residents of the east sometimes do not want to move to the west, where Ukrainian is the predominant language.

The biggest challenges? Work and decent housing

When it comes to living conditions, it is important to mention the difficulties they face in finding work. An IOM survey conducted at the end of last year revealed that only 67% of IDPs had income from employment or business.

The causes of low employment are listed in an analysis by the Swiss REACH initiative from July 2025: a mismatch between the qualifications of displaced persons and local demand; low wages, that are insufficient to cover necessities; fears of conscription into the army, which prevents young men from registering as job seekers; and, last but not least, a shortage of places in nurseries, which prevents single mothers from entering the labour market.

As expected, the job situation is worse in the eastern regions—both in large cities such as Kharkiv and Dnipro, and in rural areas.

A direct consequence of the difficulties in finding work, but also of the length of displacement—the average displacement period is three years—is an extremely high risk of poverty. Displaced people lack medicines, power banks, food, and hygiene products. To obtain them, they often have to resort to drastic measures. According to IOM findings, for example, one in ten displaced persons had to sell their house or flat to cover their living expenses. More than half of those surveyed have resorted to humanitarian aid at some point, compared to only one in seven among the rest of the population.

Housing shortages are a separate issue. The vast majority of IDPs live in private accommodation, usually rented (67% compared to 6% of the general population), which places a considerable strain on their budgets, especially if they live in Kyiv, the Kyiv Oblast or in the west, where rents are very high.

Only about 70,000 people currently live in collective centres for IDPs. Centres in the central and western parts of the country have some free capacity, but those in the east, for example in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, are practically full, and newly evacuated residents of towns and villages near the front line often have to be directed further west. A significant problem with collective centres is that they are increasingly filled with elderly people and people with disabilities who have nowhere else to go.

State aid often falls short

In situations of material hardship, the importance of financial assistance from the state naturally increases. During the first two years of full-scale war, the state paid benefits to IDPs across the board. Since 2024, only particularly vulnerable people, such as those with disabilities, families with children, or senior citizens, have been eligible for these benefits. Depending on their level of vulnerability, they are entitled to 2,000-3,000 hryvnia per month (approximately €40-60).

A whole range of other benefits, not only financial, are added to the basic allowance. These include rent subsidies, preferential loans, priority enrolment of children in schools, and preferential access to retraining.

It is difficult to evaluate state support as a whole, but based on interviews— especially coordinators from collective centres—it is probably possible to agree with the verdict of some Ukrainian analysts that, although there are many support programmes, overall they are only sufficient for internally displaced persons to survive.

Unfortunately, the greatest room for improvement remains in an area that is absolutely crucial for most IDPs—housing. According to experts in this field, the worst problem is not a lack of money, but rather an extremely inefficient system of distribution. For example, the authorities record the "housing needs" of displaced persons, but even after 3.5 years, they are unable to define exactly what this means. The registers of people in need are not interconnected and differ dramatically in terms of numbers. The construction and renovation of houses is slow, contractual procedures are lengthy, and tendering procedures are non-transparent.

Yet it is precisely this poor access to decent housing that predestines people affected by war to move again. If the state fails or continues to fail in this area, further mass population movements cannot be ruled out—primarily within Ukraine itself, but in the longer term also abroad.